


the high road is hard to find

by gingertime



Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: F/M, Gen, Identity Swap, POV Female Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-02
Updated: 2014-04-03
Packaged: 2018-01-14 06:05:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1255639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gingertime/pseuds/gingertime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's Kochanski's turn to be the hero.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. a detour to your new life

**Author's Note:**

> This fic emerged from two sources: A) a sad lack of Kochanski-centric stories (she is the best, you guys, come on!!!), and B) a stupid doodle I did of all the Red Dwarf characters in Ace's wig in which Kochanski looked, by far, the hottest.
> 
> My timeline and some details may or may not be canon compliant-- I started writing two days after I finished marathoning the entire series, so apologies in advance for any dumb mistakes.
> 
> Anyway, enjoy!

It had been seven years since Kristine Kochanski left her home dimension, and six since the crew’s collective stint in the Brig had ended explosively (and confusingly-- she’d never managed to sort out quite what had happened), returning the mining ship _Red Dwarf_ to a comfortably lonely status quo. Six years of being the only woman around for three million light-years; six years of the tedium of deep space and the slow burn of mounting ennui, and six years of being the best thing that had ever happened to Dave Lister.

In the aftermath of the corrosive bacteria incident, with _Red Dwarf_ newly empty again and the vastness of her fate pressing down from every shiny beveled edge of the ship’s interior, Kochanski had, at long last, taken Lister up on his standing offer of sexual engagement. Laying in his tiny bunk afterwards, listening to the sound of his satisfied breathing, she’d wondered why it had taken her so long. She’d realized how little he differed from “her” Dave Lister within the first month aboard _Starbug_ , realized the only real distinction between one man and the other was a stupid haircut and surface quirks and half a decade’s worth of unshared memory and that they were, fundamentally, the exact same guy-- so why had she been so reluctant to resume their relationship? She’d been sex-starved for longer than she cared to admit, and the JMC-issue vibrator she’d cherished throughout her Dave’s soft-light period had been left on the wrong side of the dimensional divide. But for those months on _Starbug_ and in the Brig, she’d still held out. She supposed that on _Starbug_ she’d still been hoping that somehow they’d be able to track down the dimensional bridge and return her to her home universe, and then in the Brig there were all those other people around to distract her, prisoners and crew and staff, most of them decidedly not Lister.

But then they were alone again, and she’d long disabused herself of the fanciful notion of ever leaving this dimension. So sex it was, and sex it would be for the next six years. Lister seemed incapable of leaving the honeymoon phase-- the energy he’d generated through pure, steadfast devotion after her death in his universe at last had an outlet, and for a while it was thrilling to be the center of his world. Like a small, scruffy stray dog, Lister had a contagious kind of love, a kind of genuine warmth that made you look past his slobber and sludge. A winning smile that made the room a little brighter when it shone and a gentleness of touch that could bring Kochanski down from the crest of anxiety faster than anything from the medi-bay’s inventory.

Her philosophy was, for those first few years, that if she was going to live out the rest of her days as the last woman in the universe, she might as well do it with a man who loved her-- even if that man smoked, drank, and had the hygienic habits of a twelve-year-old. She convinced herself to look past his socks, and his curry habit, and his refusal to even consider the possibility of intellectual betterment. She promised herself that she’d be a good influence, that she’d stick by him and somehow make him a better man, because if she believed in anything on this godforsaken desolate rustbucket she called home, she believed in Lister, and she believed that he deserved to be more than he was.

“I can’t believe it,” he’d say, over and over. “I can’t believe I’ve got you, Kris. I don’t deserve you. I’m so lucky.”

And she’d giggle, and laugh, and pull him back on top of her.

But time passed, as time does, and Lister remained as consistent as a trigonometric function, oscillating between poles of depravity and decency with unfailing regularity. Kochanski couldn’t bear to see him dig himself deeper into his vice-filled abyssal hole of a midlife crisis, but her alternative options were few and far between. It would be easy enough to break up with him, move out of their shared room, with its twee photo-booth strips stuck to the walls and big comfy loveseat that they’d spent shared hours watching movies on-- but even if she went back to her old bunk on A Deck, the one with the beautiful window looking out on _Red Dwarf_ ’s port side and quite a nice bathtub, she would still have to see Lister every day. There would be meals, and maintenance, and, of course, when they took _Starbug_ out on missions and faced whatever nefarious onslaught the galaxy had decided to cough up for them that day.

Kochanski suspected that Lister knew that there was no way out for her, and that he took solace in the fact that she was, as far as he knew, stuck with him. Till death do we part, and all that, only she’d never exactly said “I do.” It had been more like a “might as well,” really.

The days went like this: she would get up, and then he would get up, they’d eat breakfast (Kochanski with granola and yogurt, Lister with whatever disgustingly sweet and sticky concoction he’d coaxed out of a food dispenser), and then they’d check in with everyone else in the drive room, see if anything had come up on the scanners overnight. If not, then there was the maintenance routine, which managed to be followed closer some days more than others, depending on how long Lister’s daily spat with Rimmer lasted. Lunch was squeezed somewhere in there, with Lister often dragging Kochanski down endless corridors to some old and dusty dispenser he’d discovered that he promised would deliver incredible, flavorful delicacies. They never did, but that didn’t stop him from scarfing down two servings. Then a few hours spent on the recreation deck, and then dinner, and then back to their quarters for sex and sleep. This was how it went, and how it had gone for the past six years, and how it looked to be going for the foreseeable future. The occasional break in the monotony due to GELF attack or black hole or time warp did surprisingly little to dispel Kochanski’s growing melancholy-- because after it was all over, after the monsters were defeated and the people were saved and time and space sewn back up neatly, she was still stuck on an empty ship with a man whose caring embrace had lately begun to feel like a straitjacket.

She started to dream of vortices in the time-space continuum that could send her spinning off into paradise, of idyllic worlds untouched by humanity’s accursed hand, of vast nebulas and soaring rings of pastel gas giants. Logically, she knew, through experience and scientific evidence, that most of what outer space had to offer was dark and rocky and often containing murderous simulants hell-bent on destruction. But some irrational part of her mind was rapidly becoming convinced that it was only due to the constant presence of the four other crew members that their encounters tended towards the dangerous and unpleasant, and if only she could set off on her own, the galaxy would graciously offer up its wonders to her.

So she’d been planning her escape. She would leave, and she would see the universe, and maybe she would come back, and maybe she wouldn’t.

She constructed a to-do list, neat and orderly as any of her numerous systems of organization. Color-coded in terms of priority and emotional significance, the list included secretly packing her bags, writing the perfectly eloquent and meaningful farewell speech, learning the ins and outs of _Blue Midget_ ’s single-pilot flight system, and slipping subtle hints into conversations with Lister.

“Looks like the circuit banks on D Deck are about to break down again,” Lister had said one morning while they were doing the maintenance rounds. The mundane day-to-day tasks of _Red Dwarf_ ’s continued operation, ostensibly to be shared equally among the crew, somehow always got relegated to the humans. Kryten busied himself with more domestic affairs, Rimmer, fancying himself an officer, somehow always had something more important to be doing, and Cat was, well, Cat.

“They’re yellow status. Not urgent,” Kochanski had replied.

“Okay… about a month, then, before we’ve got to get down there and replace them. Maybe with that new hypercable that came in the mail pod last week?”

Kochanski had gazed at her clipboard, seeing asteroid belts and pulsars dance before her eyes instead of grayscale equipment diagrams and checklists.

“Kris? A month, hey, you wanna put that down on your schedule?”

“Oh-- well, who knows what I’ll be up to in a month, really,” she’d said, and smiled faintly.

On many an occasion, it crossed Kochanski’s mind that maybe subliminal communication was not the best way to break up with someone. But then a vision would rise, unbidden, to her mind’s eye: she would flatly inform Lister of her intent to depart as soon as possible, and his face would slowly contort into a grotesque mask of rage and disbelief. Then, suddenly, he’d snap back into his normal expression and say, “Sorry, what were we talking about?” After so many years, she was familiar with the intricacies of Dave Lister’s curry-addled mind, and so she was certain that it wasn’t that he wouldn’t take the news well, but that he simply wouldn’t take it at all. The fact of her coming absence would slide off the surface of his brain like jelly off Kryten’s factory-polished backside, incompatible with his universal paradigm and unable to be retained.

So Kochanski resigned herself to the scenario she’d built up in her head: bags in hand, she would call the whole crew down from their quarters to the launching bay, where she would proceed to deliver her farewell speech. There would be lots of crying and hugging-- even Kryten would shed a single mechanical tear-- but Kochanski’s makeup would still look perfect, and her outfit wouldn’t be mussed at all, and then she’d be off, out of the airlock and into the shimmering dark and, most importantly-- far, far away from Dave Lister.

For the past seven years Lister had been as equally real and solid as he had been a spectre of her subconscious, haunting her every move both actual and imagined. Kochanski knew that if she didn’t get off this ship soon, he’d catch back up with her heart, and the doors of her future would slam shut forever. She circled him like a comet with an erratic orbit around a red sun, drawing ever closer but unwilling to plunge into its fiery depths quite yet. She’d still got life in her, life ahead of her, and though the gravitational pull towards the constancy and comfort of Lister’s unwavering desire was strong, she knew he would burn up eventually, and if she was still around, he’d take her with him. It was for her own good that she was getting the hell out.

“Your biological clock is ticking, Miss Kochanski,” Kryten had said the other night as he scrubbed the table of Kochanski and Lister’s room. Lister was down on the recreation deck playing ping-pong with Cat, and so Kochanski had taken advantage of this reprieve to draw herself a nice hot bath. “You were so keen on repopulating the human race when we met you, and yet I hear no pitter-patter of little feet. Are you not still planning to have a child with Mr. Lister?”

“We did have a child,” said Kochanski. “And look how he turned out!”

Kryten shook his head. “His father’s son,” he said, tutting.

They both laughed.

“That was something I wanted a long time ago,” Kochanski said, carefully. “I had different priorities. Everything’s changed so much since then….”

“True,” said Kryten. “But do you not feel an obligation to your species?”

She sighed heavily. “I mean-- yes, I suppose I do-- but it’s just so much. Why do I have to bear the responsibility of resurrecting a dead race? Humans have wreaked so much havoc on the universe-- maybe we’re all gone for a reason. I don’t know.”

Kryten tilted his head, processing this nihilistic outburst, and decided in the end that it was best not to respond. He returned to his cleaning, and left Kochanski to her own thoughts, cheerless daydreams that looped in on each other like the ouroboros of causality that had brought her to this universe in the first place.

********

It was the afternoon of another interminable, indistinguishable day aboard _Red Dwarf_. Kochanski was wandering the corridors listlessly, unwilling to return to her quarters while Lister was still banging out Rastabilly Skank covers on his precious guitar. She’d decided, to pass the time, to count the panels on the corridors, hoping that perhaps that their random sequence would suddenly resolve itself into a pattern that would speak, with mathematical precision, of a simple solution to all her troubles.

In the drive room, Rimmer sat fiddling with the instruments, consulting his well-worn astronavigational guidebook. He looked up as Kochanski entered, counting: “Four thousand six hundred seventy-five, four thousand six hundred seventy-six…”

She glanced around. “Oh. The panels end here. That’s quite disappointing.”

“Kochanski, what on earth are you doing?” Rimmer asked, momentarily peeved at this disruption to his studies.

She slumped down heavily into the chair next to Rimmer’s and buried her head in her hands. After a while, she rubbed her eyes, looked up, and said, “I honestly couldn’t tell you.”

Closing his book and breathing in deeply, preparing himself for the psychological onslaught he knew was coming, Rimmer turned to face Kochanski.

“Spit it out,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“Look, Kochanski, despite popular opinion, I’m not an idiot. I’ve seen you dragging your feet down the halls and moaning and groaning for months now. What’s going on with you?”

She stared at him. “I can’t believe this. Arnold J. Rimmer, concerned for the emotional and psychological well-being of another? It must be the end of the world!”

Ignoring this attack on his steadfast commitment to the ongoing sanity of his crew, Rimmer looked Kochanski up and down, taking in the dark circles under her eyes, her hunched shoulders.

“Are you sick? Have you got some kind of slow-acting space plague, attacking the happiness centers of your brain?” he asked nervously.

She rolled her eyes. “No!”

He took a shot in the dark. “You’re not… pregnant, are you?”

Kochanski let out a mirthless shriek of laughter. “Oh my god, no. No, Rimmer, I’m not pregnant. Promise.”

He breathed out a sigh of relief. “Phew. Don’t know if I could handle that, to tell you the truth.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes, gazing out at the infinite starscape trapped safely behind the drive room’s expansive reinforced glass windows.

“Rimmer, I’m leaving,” Kochanski finally said, so softly that she wasn’t sure Rimmer had even heard her.

“A vacation, hmm?” he asked. “Well, there’s that lava planet we passed a few weeks

back-- might be a touch too hot for sunbathing though-- or maybe a nice asteroid? Set up a little tent, teach a few skutters how to give massages, and you’re good to go!”

“Not a vacation,” said Kochanski. “For good.”

“Wait, you’re serious?” said Rimmer, taken aback. “You’re really going to just... leave? Why?”

“There has to be more than this,” replied Kochanski. “Every day, the same, and there’s a whole universe out there--”

“But we’ve seen the universe! We’re _seeing_ it! We’re hurtling through space at nearly the speed of light, and every week we’ve got a different flavor of insanity to deal with-- sentient planets, telepathic GELFs, crazed mechanoids-- what more could you possibly want?”

“I just need to get away, Rimmer.”

“Wait a minute. Is this about Lister? I thought you two were doing alright! What’s changed?”

“That’s just the thing. Nothing’s changed, and nothing will, unless I do something about it.”

“But why does doing something about it have to involve swanning off? You can’t just Eat Pray Love your way across the galaxy like some kind of space case gimboid! You’ve got responsibilities _here_ , Kochanski, we need you!”

“You don’t know what it’s like,” moaned Kochanski frustratedly. “Having to live with him--”

“Are you kidding?” Rimmer scoffed. “I spent longer bunking with him than you have! Believe me, anything Dave Lister has to offer from the depths of his smelly, gunk-caked soul, I’ve experienced. As much as I’d love to say I don’t, I know that man like the back of my hand.”

“Alright,” she said. “Since you’ve apparently got a Ph.D in Listerology, can you tell me something?”

"Of course."

“Does he take me for granted?”

Rimmer had been expecting to be quizzed on how to most effectively steal Lister’s guitar, or maybe on the feasibility of a fragrance-free curry substitute, so Kochanski’s question threw him for a loop. Interpersonal relationships had never been his strong point (and that was just speaking of his own, to say nothing of his interpretations of others’ connections.) He knew that he, certainly, took the bond between Kochanski and Lister for granted-- their partnership had been a constant of life on _Red Dwarf_ for so many years now that it had become a fact of life, a steady reality on the level of Cat’s improbable wardrobe or his own inability to get Space Corps directives correct on the first try. But did Lister feel the same way? Rimmer honestly could not say, and a part of him doubted whether Lister would be able to either.

Rimmer wondered what the correct answer was; whether it would be a “yes” or a “no” out of his mouth that convinced Kochanski to stay. As the de facto leader (or so he liked to think of himself) of this ragtag ship, he had to protect the integrity of the crew-- he had to see this phase of Kochanski’s, whatever its origin, through to the other side. If there was one.

So for a response, to avoid culpability in the event that she actually did leave and the blame came to rest upon his shoulders, Rimmer settled on a noncommittal “Yeeennnooeeurgh,” and moved his head in a motion that combined both a shake and a nod. That should do it, he thought satisfactorily.

Kochanski stood up. “God, I don’t know why I thought it’d be a good idea to talk to you,” she said.

“Because I’m a social genius with a knack for counseling in tricky situations, and the symmetry of my face has comforting properties?” Rimmer supplied helpfully.

“Bye, Rimmer,” said Kochanski, gave a little wave, and left the drive room.

Pulling her daily planner from her pocket, she put a star on the page for Wednesday the 17th. It was settled, then-- she’d leave in a week’s time.

********

Of course, like everything other major event in her life up to now, absolutely nothing about Kochanski’s departure went as planned.

First there was the incident in which Cat somehow discovered her carefully packed clothes cache, all ready to pick up behind a panel in the corridor on the way to the launching bay. She realized what had happened when he entered the dining area at lunch time, spinning on his heel, dressed in what could be nothing other than her favorite scarlet miniskirt somehow converted into a capelet. And were those her sparkly legwarmers tied together to become a belt as well?

“Oooo-EEE, I am looking good!” Cat yowled. “I was just prowlin’ around this morning when I picked up the scent of something real cool!”

When he received no answer from the assembled crew, all who were busy eating, Cat prompted, “C’mon, ask me what I found! Ask me!”

“Okay, okay, Cat. What did you find?” Lister mumbled through a mouthful of rice.

“You’ll never guess!”

“What was it, then?” said Rimmer.

“A big box of clothes!” screeched Cat, waving his hands up and down to show off his new duds. “Someone musta left ‘em there way back when! They’re super clean! Pristine! And all for meeee!”

And with that proclamation, he skipped off.

“I hate that smegging cat,” Kochanski groaned to herself, and sank down in her chair.

********

And then there was the fight.

It was Sunday night, and Kochanski and Lister had started squabbling over something entirely inconsequential. After all was said and done, Kochanski couldn’t even recall what had set it off-- it could’ve been anything, from Lister making fun of Kochanski’s obsessive journal-keeping again to Kochanski harping on Lister to get his laundry done at least once before the month was up.

But whatever the original impetus was, by fifteen minutes in they were standing on opposite ends of the room, screaming at each other.

“You’ve never taken a word I’ve said seriously in your entire sorry existence, have you?” Kochanski yelled.

“I take you seriously all the time, Kris! Just not when you’re telling me what to do and what not to do like-- like you’re my mother or something!”

“Dave, technically I _am_ your--”

“I don’t wanna smegging hear it! You haven’t got a motherly bone in your whole body! It’s just rules and lists and journals and bossy bossy bossy all day long!”

“If you would only just take time out of your busy schedule of eating and drinking and draping yourself artistically across furniture to _think_ about how your actions affect others, then maybe you wouldn’t be rapidly approaching middle age stuck at the emotional maturity level of a sixth-former!”

“Well, if you would only get off your high smegging horse for one single moment and relax, maybe you would realize that there’s more to life than order and propriety! There’s more out there than doing the right thing at the right time, Kris! There’s nobody around to tell me what to do, and that’s the way I like it! Why can’t you just--”

“Dave, I love you!” She shrieked it like it was a dirty word, with all the weight of her fury behind it, and Lister was shocked into silence.

“And that’s exactly why I can’t stand seeing you like this,” she continued, quieter. “Like you’re still in stasis. Never picking up the pace, Dave, I know you’re more than this, I know you can be someone who doesn’t wear the same clothes every day, doesn’t groom himself with kitchen utensils, for God’s sake--”

Her voice caught, and she swallowed hard. She wouldn’t cry, not now-- she couldn’t! She gathered her wits, ready to continue her monologue, but Lister swooped in before she could get a word out. Striding up to her, exuding self-confidence and swagger and that indescribable, glowing _something_ that was what drew her back to him every time, in every universe.

Standing close to her now, he took her hands, and looked right into her eyes.

“Kristine. We don’t have to be like this,” he said gently. “We can go back to how we were.”

Kochanski set her jaw and, with uncharacteristic spontaneity, made a decision that would change her life forever.

“No,” she said. “We can’t.”

And then before he could grab her, kiss her, bring her stumbling back from the precipice of destiny she was teetering upon, she was running out the door, down the hall, and all the way to the launching bay.

He called her name, but she didn’t hear. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway.

*********

Kryten met her in the launching bay, hurrying up beside her as she approached _Blue Midget_ , the few bags that had escaped Cat’s plunder in her hands.

“Miss Kochanski, please don’t go!” he pleaded.

“You can’t stop me, Kryten, so don’t even bother,” she said, slamming the button on the side of the ship that released the staircase.

“But-- but what am I supposed to tell Mr. Lister?”

Kochanski’s plan was completely smegged-- she’d never get to give her speech now, never get to make that graceful exit she’d been treasuring the dream of, but at this point it was of no consequence. She had to do what she had to do, and if Lister never knew what happened to her, where and why she’d gone-- well, so be it!

“It doesn’t matter,” Kochanski snapped. “Let him think I’m dead, for all I care. Spare his feelings, yeah, that’ll do him good. But I’ve got to go. I can’t be with him anymore. I can’t be here anymore.”

She stepped into the ship.

“I’m sorry--” she choked out, but it was too late-- the door was closing, and Kryten had turned away and was walking back up the corridor to the main decks.

Somehow calmer than she expected she’d be at this critical moment, Kochanski settled into the pilot’s seat and loaded up the pre-flight programs, flipping switches and checking gauges.

The engines powered up with a purr, and the airlocks snapped securely shut onboard _Blue Midget_ and around the cavernous launching bay. Nobody could get in now, to stop her or to see her off-- she was on her own. With the convenient lack of any type of flight control on the empty _Red Dwarf_ , Kochanski was able to simply press a button, and the vast entrance to the bay opened, hydraulics hissing, revealing the vacuum of outer space beyond.

Steam gushing out of its anterior vents, the ship took off. Kochanski’s knuckles were white as she gripped the controls, guiding _Blue Midget_ out of the launching bay. The bay doors shut automatically behind her, and then she was zooming away from _Red Dwarf_ at a speed that made her stomach do flips. This felt nothing like leaving on a quick getaway to raid a derelict or investigate a comet-- in solitary silence of the cockpit, Kochanski could only hear the sound of her own heart and the rumble of the ship’s engine. No explanations from Kryten, no rebuttals from Rimmer, no exclamations from Cat, and no jokes from Lister. The heavy quiet that settled around her like a blanket as she rode out into the dark was somehow rhythmic, like a bell tolling, but Kochanski couldn’t tell if it was ringing the death knell of the life she had known or heralding the birth of something entirely new. Perhaps it was both, or neither.

Suddenly, the ship’s comms alert lit up with a _ding_ \-- there was something coming through. It was some sort of video message, originating from _Red Dwarf_. Could it be Lister, calling to say goodbye?

Kochanski patched the signal through to the nearest monitor. She clenched her fists tightly as the feed resolved itself, pixels arranging row by row into a static-filled image. She realized within seconds that it wasn’t a heartfelt confessional from Lister, and was momentarily angry with how disappointed she was. It seemed to be some sort of security footage, being directly transmitted to _Blue Midget_ from a camera somewhere on _Red Dwarf_ \-- from the looks of it, the corridor right outside Lister and Kochanski’s-- no, just Lister’s now-- bunk.

A message flashed in the corner. LIVE -- FOR YOU -- KRYTEN.

On the screen, Kochanski watched as Kryten entered the hallway and knocked on Lister’s door. He answered, and Kochanski could tell by the casual way he stood that, in the approximately seven minutes since she’d deserted him, he’d practically forgotten all about their argument. He had even gotten into his bathrobe, all ready for his nightly soak.

The audio quality was poor, and rapidly getting poorer as she accelerated away from the source of the signal, and so when Kryten started to speak Kochanski struggled to make out his words.

“--so sorry, Mr. Lister, I truly am--”

Lister said, “What is it?”

Then Kryten’s whole body sagged forward in an impressive display of emotion--

“--out of the airlock--”

A burst of static roiled the display.

“--couldn’t do anything, I tried to save her--”

Lister responded then,  so quiet Kochanski couldn’t hear---

“--sorry-- I’m sorry-- she’s gone--”

More static-- Kochanski gave the screen a whack, and a second later the picture and sound returned-- Lister was screaming, now, he’d sunk to his knees--

“KRISTINE!!”

Kryten, crouching down next to Lister-- Rimmer, running down the corridor, supporting Lister as his knees buckled and he fell back--

“NO!”

Cat, arriving-- patting Lister ineffectively on the shoulder--

Lister’s face buried in Rimmer’s chest, sobbing-- and then he screamed again, screamed her name, she couldn’t hear now, the audio had gone, but she would recognize the way his mouth formed those familiar syllables from miles away--

“KRISTINE!”

As the footage disintegrated into a thousand splinters of data, the last thing she saw was Kryten look up from that tragic tableau and seemingly, impossibly, stare her down across the widening distance between her and _Red Dwarf_.

 _I did this for his sake_ , his eyes said, and then the display went blank, flashing _SIGNAL LOST -- SIGNAL LOST -- SIGNAL LOST._   

Every inch of her shaking, Kochanski leaned back from the screen. Softly, slowly, she began to cry, the tears she had been holding back since she had been standing inches away from Dave Lister for perhaps the last time in her life now rushing down her face in a flood.

All this time she’d seen Lister’s selfishness as the fatal flaw, the lava flowing and churning at the bottom of the growing gulf between them. But hearing his anguished cries echo in her head, she began to curse the magnitude of her own self-centered actions. Why had she told Kryten to tell Lister she was dead? She tried desperately to convince herself that she hadn’t meant it like _that_ \-- but yes, she _had_ , in that moment that was exactly what she had wanted. For all the times she’d begged Lister to just try and see things from her point of view, to look at it from the other side, tonight she’d failed to follow her own advice.

“What have I done?” Kochanski whispered to the stars streaming by outside the windows, but, crystal and safe in their velvet firmament, they gave her no answer.

********

Kochanski awoke to alarms blaring, lights flashing, and the ship rocking back and forth so hard that she was nearly thrown from the pilot’s chair. She must have fallen asleep-- what was going on--?

Struggling to extract herself from the drowsy stupor the rude awakening had left her in, Kochanski tried to will her aching body into alertness. She squinted at the ship’s dashboard readouts, their scrolling data and warnings blurring and warping and finally coming into focus before her tired eyes.

“Oh, smeg.”

Though it had felt like only minutes ago that she’d been watching the stars fly past through her seemingly inexhaustible supply of tears, according to the ship’s clock, thirteen hours had passed since she had departed _Red Dwarf_. The ship, monitoring her heart rate and brain waves by conduction through the wired fabric of the pilot’s chair, had noted that she’d fallen asleep and had, in accordance with safety protocols, immediately gone into autopilot mode. But without a human at the wheel, and with Kochanski having neglected, in her heightened emotional state, to actually bother setting a course when she took off, the navigational instruments had simply steered towards the nearest S3 planetoid. And as Kochanski was slowly realizing, with a sinking heart and a racing mind, that planetoid happened to be smack dab in the middle of a GELF territorial war zone.

The radar indicated that four massive warships, two from each warring faction and all armed with the finest digital artillery that the derelict graveyards scattered throughout the local quadrant had to offer, were currently converging on her location. As a defenseless intruder on an ongoing battle, Kochanski could reasonably expect to be raided, her ship stripped of its valuable systems equipment and fuel, and to be taken prisoner and be promptly (or not so promptly, depending on how much kindness her inhuman hosts were willing to expend) tortured and executed in any number of gruesome ways-- or, alternatively, if she wasn’t even worth their time, she’d simply be shot down and left to die.

Kochanski wrested control of the ship’s steering wheel from the autopilot and dived into an evasive maneuver. Attempting to avoid the cannon fire that was erupting from all around her, she swerved to and fro like a jungle adventurer trying to confuse the simple mind of a hungry alligator.

“Opening up comms channel with the nearest GELF ship,” she shouted to nobody in particular over the din of the laser blasts clipping the weakened shields of _Blue Midget_.

Managing to spare her precious concentration for a moment, she pressed a few buttons and within seconds had called up the haggard, hairy face of the GELF commander onto the monitor.

“Requesting permission to pass through this sector unharmed,” Kochanski said. “I have no intent to interfere.”

The GELF made a repetitive, hoarse noise that sounded rather like he was choking on a nasty piece of gristle-- and then Kochanski realized that he was laughing.

“Ach-kiz-maffa-hagh-hagh-hogaaga!” the commander spat derogatorily.

“Look, I know you can speak English, there’s no sense pretending,” Kochanski yelled, dodging from side to side to avoid a barrage of deadly blasts from the very ship she was attempting to communicate with. “You’re flying a salvaged 24th-century Space Corps junk collector, with all its signage and instructions in English, and you’ve also gone and painted “SMEG OFF” on the sides!”

“Meek-mo-kondogogo, harrumph-aga-cha-mooki-faffaragha,” the GELF rumbled-- a threat, maybe? A warning tone blared from the radar as laser fire approached her from both the port and starboard sides of the ship. She pulled back with all of her might on the controls, sending the ship into a vertical climb out of harm’s way.

“Are you trying to scare me? Because it’s not working,” Kochanski bluffed. Hopefully this GELF hadn’t been bred with empathic tendencies, otherwise he’d be able to tell immediately that she was absolutely shit-your-pants terrified. “I’m armed,” she continued. “I’ve got-- I’ve got neutrino torpedos, and heat-seeking hydro-quantum missiles-- if you don’t let me through, I swear I’ll open fire!”

“Prove it, fleshy friend,” said the commander. “If you have big weapon, as you claim, use it on enemy. Kill them all for us.” He grinned now, revealing a mouth crowded with huge, jagged, rotting teeth. “Pretty please?”

Kochanski froze. He’d called her bluff, and he knew it. The Blue Midget had no weapons at all-- only cheap defensive shields that were currently crumbling under the assault from the GELFs. The GELF commander began to laugh again now, a grating spasm of maniacal dissonance. Furiously, Kochanski leaned forward and switched off the communications channel, a short-lived shock of satisfaction washing over her as his disgusting face disappeared and his laugh was silenced.

The attack doubled in intensity. Now _Blue Midget_ was taking heat from ships on both sides-- her appearance in the midst of the battle must have distracted the simple-minded GELFs, turning a routine turf war into a game of cat and mouse, in which the former enemies had banded together to hunt her down. Smoke started to pour from all around the ship as the computer banks, attempting to engage repair protocols, overloaded simultaneously. Kochanski, always top of her class in navigation and war simulations back in school, played the ship’s controls with finesse and expertise-- but when she veered off to the left in order to evade a series of high-frequency pulses from one GELF ship, she crossed right into the course of a laser bombardment from another.

Explosions rocked the cockpit, and Kochanski struggled to maintain control of the ship’s course. “Damage report?” she yelled urgently. She waited for a response-- and then abruptly remembered that she was completely alone.

She fumbled for the button on the dashboard that would bring up the damage report, but before she could find it, the light inside the ship shifted from sterile fluorescent to flashing red.

“ _FULL SYSTEMS FAILURE_ ,” a calm robotic voice rang out above the clang and cacophony of the lasers still firing all around. “ _IMPACT IMMINENT._ ”

Kochanski looked up to see the planetoid looming dangerously before her. Red and rocky, pockmarked with craters and the glowing veins of tectonic boundaries, it did not look like a friendly place to stay the night, let alone hurtle into at over 20,000 miles per hour. But it did have a breathable atmosphere-- if she could somehow get down to its surface unharmed, then maybe, just maybe she would get out of this alive.

This is what she got, she supposed, for leaving. The universe’s cruel way of telling her that she probably should’ve stayed in the boy’s club of _Red Dwarf_ and continued down the same enervated path of monotony and dysfunction she’d been heaving herself up. The universe’s not-so-subtle method of getting its message across that there was nothing out here for her-- there never would be-- and she was better off being taken for granted by the lonely, static inhabitants of the mining ship she’d left behind than taking her fate into her own hands. First the heartrending cruelty of Kryten’s deception of Lister, and now a plunge towards almost certain death? Kochanski couldn’t decide if this was karma or just bad luck. Maybe it would be best to just give up-- but she couldn’t! She had to make it up to Lister somehow, someday, and she could hardly do that while being as dead as he believed she was.

Choking on the acrid fumes filling the air, Kochanski fought her way out of the cockpit and towards the back of the ship, where the escape pod was located. But as she reached for the lever that would open the pod’s door, a familiar rasping voice sounded from behind her.

“Not so fast, human. No escape!”

Kochanski spun around. The comms monitor had lit up, and the GELF commander’s transmission was coming through loud and clear, ironically the only thing seeming to work among the ship’s damaged state and failing systems.

“I’ve done nothing wrong!” she yelled. “Just let me go!”

“You have committed tactical error,” the GELF responded.

“And what would that be?”

“You are so much fun to kill.”

And before she could turn back to the pod and make her getaway, a shockwave of light and sound and heat threw her violently to the ground. As she fought to stay conscious, the jarring, inhuman laughter of the GELF commander rang through the smoldering ship, mocking her-- then it all went dark.

********

When Kochanski woke up, everything was burning.

For a moment she thought that she was back on _Red Dwarf_ , and Lister had put a tin can in the microwave and set the curtains on fire again-- but then it all came flooding back to her. The GELF ships, the commander’s grotesque cackle as he shot her down--

From her vantage point, gazing up from the floor out of a jagged, smoking hole in the ceiling of the cockpit, she could see the stars clearly shining through the orange-tinged haze of thin clouds. She’d made it down to the surface of the planetoid, somehow-- she hadn’t died in the crash! But how was that possible? The ship’s engines had been failing, the navigation systems were completely destroyed, she’d been doomed for sure--

A loud crash sounded from somewhere close to her. Kochanski sat up, wincing in pain, and saw that a part of the ship’s midsection had collapsed, flames licking from its severed fuel cables. With a jolt of anxiety, she realized that the entire structure was an unstable powder keg of hydrocarbons and heat. If she didn’t get out of the ship soon, the whole thing could blow up— with her still inside.

Staggering to her feet, Kochanski began to search desperately for a safe way out of the blazing wreck. Reddish boulders blocked the shattered front window completely, probably plowed up by the ship’s impact on the surface. The cockpit door on the starboard side that she’d entered the ship through was a no-go, a toppled, sparking computer bank blocking its lower half. With the midsection collapsed, she had no way of reaching the back doors, and the hole above her head that she’d glimpsed the stars through was much too high for her to reach.

It had become so hot and loud in the ruined ship, Kochanski couldn’t think-- the ship’s metal frame was creaking and groaning as it melted and warped, and the sparks flying from live wires and damaged electronics were singing her clothes and skin-- there was no way out, it would all end for her here and now, she’d made it through the crash for nothing--

Her morbid reverie was interrupted abruptly by the sudden entrance of a rope ladder through the hole in the roof. It shimmered in front of her like a hallucination, its clean metal rungs at aesthetic odds with the dark, smoky mayhem of the destroyed spaceship’s interior.

Steadily, tentatively, she reached a hand out to touch the ladder, half-believing it would disappear before she could grab hold. But it didn’t-- its solid form, cool to the touch, held fast.

Was this some sort of trick? If she climbed up the ladder, and out of the ship, would a vast army of GELF warriors be waiting there to finish what they’d started?

The ship rumbled and vibrated ominously around her, a grim reminder that it could all erupt any second now. She gazed up at the patch of starry sky visible through the ladder’s hole, her eyes burning from the fumes and her mind churning with competing visions: a mad dash away from a mushroom cloud, blooming above the rocky horizon of the barren planetoid-- her lifeless body on the roof of the burning ship, pierced with GELF bullets--

“What are you waiting for? You’ve gotta get out of there, this whole thing’s about to blow! Climb!”

Coming from the direction the ladder had been thrown, these words pierced clear through the chaos. There was someone out there, someone here to save her-- and from the commanding yet comforting sound of their voice, Kochanski was pretty that whoever it was, they probably weren’t a murderous GELF.

Sooty, toxic smoke was pouring out of every crevice in the cockpit now, and the only thing discernible in the blackness was the ladder’s shining rungs hanging in front of her. So, one hand in front of the other, Kochanski started to climb.

Strong arms gripped her as she came up onto the roof-- she could barely see through the thick smoke, and didn’t manage to get clear view of her rescuer before she was thrust forcefully down an intact portion of the ship’s canted exterior. She slid safely to the rocky ground, and as her feet touched down, a yell came from above her--

“Go! Run! Now!”

Kochanski obeyed. Without looking back, she began to run as fast as she could away from  _Blue Midget_ , leaping over the rocks and ridges that covered the planetoid’s surface. Adrenaline pounding through her, and with the mindless drive of instinctual self-preservation, she ran and and ran and ran until she was ten, twenty, fifty feet away.

She would have run farther-- she would have run until the end of the universe, then, if that voice had told her so-- but then something changed in the air, a shift in the movement of her surroundings, and, not knowing quite why, she stopped running, and turned around.

A man was silhouetted against the flames leaping from what remained of _Blue Midget_ , his form majestic and proud. From this distance, Kochanski couldn’t make out his features, but there was something indescribably familiar about him.

She stared-- she squinted-- _it couldn’t be_ \--!

And just as a small thrill of recognition began to ripple up through the depths of her subconscious, the ship in front of her exploded. A huge cloud of ash and smoke and debris blossoming, rising into the air, the shockwave from the blast racing towards her, rust-red rocks launched feet into the air and then crashing down all around--

But now, against the screaming protests of her primal hindbrain, desperate for survival at all costs, she was running back towards the ship, the way she came, dodging twisted, glowing bits of metal falling like Fortean fish and shielding her face from the volatile vapors spread by the detonation.

Then she saw him. Lying prone among the shock-strewn detritus, thrown some ten yards from the site of the wreckage, his face bloodied but unmistakable, was a man Kochanski knew very well.

“Rimmer!”

She was at his side in an instant, fearing the worst. Crouching down next to him and straining to recall her first-aid training, she ripped off her jacket and crumbled it up, shoving it underneath his head as an impromptu cushion.

“Oh my god, Rimmer-- are you alright, please be alright-- what are you doing here-- and what are you _wearing_ \--?”

At the sound of her voice his eyes fluttered open, and he gazed up at her with an expression so gentle, gracious, and blatantly un-Rimmer-like that she felt a wrench of cognitive dissonance loosen her already-tenuous grip on the situation.

“Hello, Krissy,” he said, his voice perfectly mellifluous and soothing despite his injured state.

Realization dawned on Kochanski, slowly and then all at once. His miraculous appearance-- his shiny jacket and pants, somehow barely dulled by the choking red dust thrown up by the explosion-- and that _hair_ \--

“You’re-- you’re Ace, aren’t you?” she said quietly.

“The genuine article,” he replied. He attempted a winning grin, but it was quickly tempered by a grimace of pain.

“They told me about you,” said Kochanski. “About how you save whole planets, and travel to parallel universes-- it’s all true?”

“True as your eyes are blue,” Ace said, somehow able to be effortlessly charming so soon after he’d been caught in a massive, fiery explosion. _What a guy,_ Kochanski thought.

“And you... saved me? But why? How?”

“Caught wind of the energy signature of a JMC exploration ship in the middle of a nasty GELF dogfight, thought it was worth taking a peek. I swung round towards the end of your little skirmish, and slowed your descent with my ship’s tractor beam--”

He was choked off by a sudden flash of light than enveloped his entire body. Like some sort of real-life display error, his outline flickered and skewed, the colors of his skin and clothes distorting into strange patterns through which the rocky ground could be seen. And then almost as soon as it had started, the glitch stopped, returning Ace to solidity.

“What was that?” Kochanski said nervously. “What’s going on?”

“My light bee,” said Ace. He was breathing heavily now, and clenching his teeth. “It was damaged in the explosion.”

“That’s right, you’re a hologram too-- but doesn’t it have a self-repair mechanism? Rimmer’s-- _my_ Rimmer’s does, otherwise he’d have kicked it a long time ago--”

“Sorry, Krissy, no can do-- this baby can withstand temperatures of up to a thousand centigrade, but that blast was a real doozy. I don’t think--”

His shape convulsed again, warping and quivering through varying states of opacity.

“I don’t think I’m gonna make it.”

“But you’ve got to survive!” cried Kochanski. “Who else is going to save small children from contaminated rivers and stop military coups on distant colonies and-- and all that ridiculous hero stuff!”

“If you know about me, you know I’m not the first,” Ace said. “All the other Rimmers--”

Kochanski remembered, with relief, Lister telling her about the cycle of replacement that existed among the Arnold Rimmers of the multiverse: each one taking on the role of Ace Rimmer and then passing the baton onto another parallel version when their time was up. So if she could somehow get Ace back to _Red Dwarf_ , he could induct the Rimmer of this dimension into the tradition, and the multiverse would be kept safe.

“Where’s your ship?” she asked, scanning the horizon through the clouds of smoke still billowing around the wreckage. “Let’s get you back there-- and we can get back to Red Dwarf, and get Rimmer--”

“No,” said Ace. “He can’t be the next Ace, that’s the difficulty.”

“Why not?” asked Kochanski.

“It’s a long story, old girl, involving dimensional duplicity--”

More glitches rippled through him as he spoke, his words breaking up intermittently into indecipherable mechanical static.

“--with the multi-layered memory syntax merges, all my idea, of course, because--”

Kochanski searched for some way to stabilize his projector, but she had never been very good with mechanics, that had always been Lister’s gig--

“--then he grabbed the rare earth elements and some fettucini--”

The hologrammatic errors finally resolved themselves once again.

“--and so _that’s_ why the Rimmer you know can never, ever take my place.”

Kochanski chose to disregard his disjointed explanation and simply believe in his assertion that this universe’s Rimmer was not a viable candidate-- it was so wonderfully easy to trust him, after all. He’d swept in like a force of nature, plucking her from the clawed grip of a tragic death and delivering her to safety with characteristic flair. She understood now why Lister went slightly dreamy-eyed whenever he spoke of Ace and his heroic actions-- and she’d also acquired a more informed perspective on why the Arnold J. Rimmer she knew would scowl and leave the room whenever his coiffed alternate self was brought up.

She reached out to put a comforting hand on his shoulder, but instead of coming into contact with the crinkly gold fabric of his outlandish jacket, her hand smacked against the dusty ground, passing through Ace’s body altogether.

“You’ve gone soft light,” she said worriedly. There was no way she could carry him back to his ship now, not when her fingers would slip straight through him like a pro wrestler up against a group of schoolchildren in a game of Red Rover.

“Trying to conserve power-- the backup battery must have kicked in. I don’t have long now.” His tone was serene, accepting, but Kochanski was still frantic.  

“There’s got to be something-- some way to save you! I owe you my _life_ \--”

Ace looked up at her, his gaze magnetic, his face’s physical features identical to those of the cowardly, anxious man she knew so well but with some strange enchanting quality transforming them into an infinitely more sympathetic and alluring countenance. His bravado was fast fading, though, as the machinery that supported his existence lost power, and Kochanski glimpsed a flicker of that familiar Rimmer panic in his eyes.

“There is something,” he said. “A contingency plan, for cock-ups along these lines. Never thought I’d see the day--”

“What is it?” Kochanski pressed.

“It’s you,” Ace murmured.

“Sorry?” She leaned in closer, thinking maybe she’d heard him wrong.

“Kristine, it’s got to be you.”

“What are you talking about? What do I have to do? Just _tell_ me!”

“If I die,” he said, with great effort, “in a universe where there’s no version of me to take my place, and I can’t get to a universe where there _is_ \--”

“Yeah?”

“The mantle of Ace Rimmer must pass to a willing substitute. Someone to carry on the name--”

Kochanski whipped her head around, searching for someone, anyone else that he could be talking about-- but it was only the two of them on the open, arid plain.

“You can’t mean… me?”

“Do you see anyone else around?” he said pleadingly, his voice as it weakened slipping out of its former swaggering tone and into something closely resembling the accent of the Rimmer from this universe.

“But I’m not-- I’m not a Rimmer! I’ve never saved anybody in my life!”

“Neither had I, before I became Ace. Neither had any of us--”

“And, you know, I’m a _woman!_ ”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“How can that not matter? Wouldn’t people _notice?_ ”

Ace shuddered as another cascade of neon glitches coursed through him. They were getting more severe, distorting his form into tessellating geometric shapes and seething static that surged against the ground and Kochanski’s body like waves crashing onto a beach.

“You’d be surprised,” he said once the glitches subsided, managing to crack a tiny smile through the pain.

“Ace, I can’t just-- _become_ you!” Kochanski half-laughed, half-cried, incredulous at the sheer impossibility of what he was asking of her.

“You _must_ \-- I can’t let the chain be broken-- my sworn duty--”

His words were coming garbled and slurred now through sweeps of electric hissing, and the thin rattling from somewhere inside his unevenly translucent body was like an augury of his coming end.

“My ship is beyond the ridge to the west-- take good care of her--”

“No-- Ace, don’t, please, _I can’t_ \--”

And then, with no fanfare, no catchphrase, no blinding blaze of light or glimmering gentle fall of dust to mark his passing, he was gone.

His light bee clinked unceremoniously to the ground, lying charred and irreparably broken among the rocks. Where his head had been resting on Kochanski’s jacket, only a limp wig remained.

Slowly, mechanically, she gathered up both objects. The light bee was comfortingly warm in her hands, the orange glow from the still-smoldering shipwreck around her glinting off of its silver surface. The wig was surprisingly unsullied-- a small puff of soot rose off of its fibers when she grabbed it, but it was structurally intact.

She stood up, and looked to the west. Beyond the radius of the explosion, past the last mangled metallic remnants of the life she’d known, Kochanski could see the wing of Ace’s ship peeking out over the ridge.

The aftermath was cold and empty after the heat and immediacy of everything that she had just experienced. The leaping flames were gone now, the smoke from the ruins curling lazily up into the hazy sky with none of its previous energy. Among the rubble, she noticed things she’d brought from _Red Dwarf_ \-- a lone red shoe, its heel burned off-- magazines, their pages blowing in the wind-- trinkets, treasures, memories. She considered picking through the wreckage, taking a few items with her, but what would be the point?

There had been a moment there, kneeling next to a dying man, helpless and hopeless, when she had not felt taken for granted. Knowing that she hadn’t been an afterthought to Ace, who could go anywhere in any universe but chose to save _her_ life, was a spark in her system, enlivening emotional pathways that had long laid dormant during the weary monotony of life aboard _Red Dwarf_. Right now, clutching the relics of Ace’s existence, the only things that could prove he had ever been here, Kochanski’s throbbing thoughts coalesced into calmness.

She had always been a supporting character in her own life. After the idyllic childhood paradise of cyberschool, she’d been shuffled onto the career track and rose dutifully through the ranks of the Space Corps. She had learned how to take orders, how to suck it up and suck it in, how to be the lone girl in the chauvinism-charged room. She’d done all that was asked of her, and been given nothing but what she thought she wanted-- what she was _expected_ to want-- in return. There had never been a reason to be anything more than acknowledged.

But Ace’s impossible exigency had changed all that in an instant. In her hands and in her heart and over that ridge, opportunity lay.

She could take his ship back to _Red Dwarf_ , hold Lister close again and tell the crew what had happened. She could resume her routine with a measure of perspective, an experience to call her own that would inform her choices moving forward.

Or she could be a hero.

Kochanski held the wig up to the light in front of her, turning it around, feeling its weight.

“One mission,” she said. “I’ll be you once. I owe you that.”

Then, one foot in front of the other, she began to walk towards the west.

****  
  



	2. ride the coattails to the finish line

The ship’s doors slid open for Kochanski as she approached, and, tentatively, she stepped inside its cool interior.

She was in some kind of large foyer, all shiny and modern and clean, much more fashionable than the rugged corridors of _Red Dwarf_. For a moment she was disoriented, trying to reconcile the relative size of the room with the much smaller outwards appearance of the ship, but then she realized that somehow, it was in possession of the same dimensionally anomalistic properties as _Starbug_. She remembered the impossibly vast size of that tiny green ship’s cargo hold, and wondered what secrets this ship had hidden away in its improbable innards.

Realizing that she was still holding Ace’s wig, and that it was making her hand uncomfortably sweaty, she placed it gently, almost ceremonially, onto a hook on the hatstand next to the door. She carefully stowed the light bee in her pocket, however-- she wasn’t ready to let go of it quite yet.

“Hello, Ace!” A friendly, female voice echoed from somewhere above Kochanski, startling her to attention-- the ship’s computer.

“Sorry-- I’m not-- my name’s Kochanski, Kristine Kochanski-- Ace isn’t here, he’s...” She trailed off, unable to bring herself to finish the sentence.

“Incarnation protocol one-nine-six-three has been activated. Welcome to the _Wildfire_ , Ace.”

A 3-D projection sprung to life in front of her in the center of the room. It was an old-fashioned monochrome hologram of Ace Rimmer, simply a recorded message with no will or movement, but Kochanski’s heart leapt up to her throat at the sight of him all the same.

“If you’re watching this,” he said, staring into the middle distance with a look that somehow combined graveness and charm, “it means I’m dead, and you’re my replacement.”

A twinge of sadness and guilt struck Kochanski’s insides like a finger on a piano key at the word “dead.” it was her fault that he was gone, after all, her fault that this message had to be played-- if she hadn’t been so selfishly reckless, he never would have had to swoop in and save her, sacrificing his life in the process.

“Don’t worry,” he said, as though reading her thoughts. “It’ll be alright.”

The recording skipped ahead, and he was leaning forward now, looking at something behind the camera capturing his image.

“One-nine-six-three? You really think that’ll happen?” Then came an inaudible response, probably from the ship’s computer, and Ace nodded, agreeing with whatever it’d said. “Alright, I’ll do it. Just in case.” He cleared his throat, straightened his jacket, and forged ahead.

“Protocol one-nine activates in the case of my death before I am able to train my successor. It means that you'll have to be trained by the computer, and she's not as great as me-- although, who is? Jokes aside, it shouldn't make too much of a difference. And then… protocol six-three activates in the case of my successor being someone other than a parallel version of myself. Now--” he quirked an eyebrow charismatically “--both of those outcomes occurring at once would be quite rare indeed. It’s never happened before; we run a tight ship around here. But I know better than anyone the infinite possibilities of the multiverse, so if you’re out there, listening to me, then I want you to know that you can do this.”

Kochanski felt her heart swell with confidence at these simple words. Though he was just a transparent projection, Ace’s warmth and faith seemed to infuse the entire room, and she fell effortlessly into his contagious belief. She _could_ do it! How hard could it be?

The recording skipped again, and now a blinking “19” hung in the air above Ace’s head. Kochanski assumed it indicated that this hologram clip was specific to protocol one-nine, and prepared to receive instructions.

“Now, usually one Ace Rimmer is trained by the last before he departs this world and heads off to the Great Telephone Pole Garden in the Sky. But in my particular line of work, infinite impossibilities are all too probable, so I’m recording this video just in case things go a bit pear-shaped. I’m sure you’re just brimming with confidence by now, old boy, but you can’t just zoom off into the dimensional sunset quite yet. You’ve got a lot of work to do, and I do wish I could be there to guide you in person, but these videos will have suffice. The ship’s computer will help you along as well, and she’s one smart cookie.

“You’ve got a lot to learn,” Ace concluded, “and not much time to do it. The universe needs you, Arnie. Good luck.” He pointed at her, winked, and then the hologram disappeared.

In its place, a swirling vortex of pink and gray popped up, an avatar of the computer that morphed and brightened as it spoke. “Your training begins now,” it said. “Are you ready, Ace?”

Kochanski thought for a moment, considered the ache in her bones and the smoke in her lungs. Then she asked: “Do you think I could get a nap in first?”

*******

The ship stretched out, labyrinthine, in curves of twisting turns and forked pathways. Through open doors and glassed windows, Kochanski caught glimpses of chambers of treasure and trophies, stacked up casually on shelves like so many books in a library. There were arching caverns of armor and weaponry, carefully catalogued, and rooms where mysterious forces churned, bright and fearsome, inside locked containers.

On the walls, helpful lights guided her towards her destination. Finally, after what felt like forever spent traipsing down deepening halls, the lights turned into a blinking arrow that pointed at a plain, wood-paneled door.

Inside was a medium-sized bedroom that bore little resemblance to Rimmer’s bunk back on _Red Dwarf_. The Rimmer she knew kept his domicile neat and organized, cataloguing his belongings to a degree of obsessiveness higher than even Kochanski, who considered herself quite cleanly, would ever consider.

Ace’s quarters, however, were far from spotless.  There was a bed in the corner, a mirror, closet, desk, dresser, an open door through which she could glimpse a bathroom, and across every surface was scattered coffee cups, papers, books, and other debris that evidenced a busy and exciting life.

Kochanski picked up a photo from the crowded desk. It showed Ace, grinning, holding up a massive eel with sharp, jagged teeth. It looked quite dead, and in the background of the photo a gathered crowd was cheering for him. On the back of the photo, a scribbled caption read “DIMENSION 330 - DEFEATED GREAT SERPENT OF PHOEBE.”

She peeked into the bathroom, which was far more unremarkable than a dimension-jumping hero’s bathroom had any right to be, and inspected the desk drawers, which were stuffed full of memorabilia. There was a wooden cabinet full of tools and supplies, string and wire and glue and pliers. She tried to open the closet as well, but, curiously, it was locked-- who locks their closet?

Although the chaos of her surroundings was like an itch at her tidy tendencies, Kochanski couldn’t bring herself to pick up the room at all before climbing into bed. The broken combs and dirty undershirts seemed sacred somehow, like holy relics, and the thought of disturbing them went against some belief she hadn’t realized she held.

So, shucking her boots and letting down her hair, Kochanski lay down among the sheets that smelled of sandalwood and sweat, and fell instantly into a deep sleep.

*******

“Good morning, Ace!” chirped the ship’s computer.

Kochanski sat up, and looked at the clock on the bedside table. It read 0930, but without knowing what time she’d passed out at, she had no way of knowing how long she’d been asleep.

“Er, good morning,” Kochanski grunted, not bothering to correct the computer on her name. “Can you show me the way to the kitchen?”

In the kitchen, which was well-stocked, Kochanski prepared herself her usual breakfast. Once she was fed and caffeinated, she headed back to Ace’s bunk, though she wasn’t sure why-- she had the whole ship to explore, after all.

She retrieved the light bee from the pocket of her trousers and sat on the bed with it for a few minutes, tossing it back and forth, up and down, its inert metal form solid and steady in her hands.

Suddenly an idea occurred to her, and she rushed over to the supplies cabinet. Pulling out a roll of red string--her favorite color--Kochanski measured out a length and then snipped it with a wire cutter. She wrapped it a few times around the light bee, until she was satisfied it was secure in its cradle, then tied the string around her neck.

The light bee swung safely next to her heart, a graceful, physical reminder of why she was on this ship in the first place. And there was the comfort of knowing that even when she put on that ridiculous outfit, and performed the daring act that would complete the task set to her by Ace, she would still bear scarlet; she would still be herself.

On top of Ace’s dresser, where previously there had been only a dirty plate and an empty cologne bottle, a pile of clean clothes had been folded neatly, probably by an unseen skutter or service bot in accordance with the enacted protocols. Kochanski picked them up: a beige t-shirt, black athletic shorts, and assorted undergarments. They fit her well enough, and she was grateful to finally remove the grimy clothes she’d been wearing since she put them on on her last morning aboard _Red Dwarf_.

She realized there was something she was missing. She had eaten breakfast, had her coffee; she was dressed and washed and the light bee was secure around her neck. She should have felt ready to face the day, get started on Ace’s assigned training-- but a definitive lack gripped her insides, urging her to remember.

And then she knew.

Like a movie playing in her mind’s eye, she saw scenes unfold in front of her. They could have been from any morning of the past few years: waking up next to Lister, his groan as she playfully pulled the covers off him in an attempt to get him out of bed-- sharing a laugh as they walked down to the drive room-- Lister smiling at her like she was the only woman in the entire universe-- well, she was, but with the way he looked at her she knew it wouldn’t matter if she wasn’t--

She shook her head, trying to clear the images away, but the ghostly outlines of Lister’s face lingered. An anger stirred within her, a fury at her subconscious for so easily forgetting the reasons she’d left. It was too soon for this romanticization of the bygone days that Kochanski knew, objectively, had not been all smiles and sunshine-- but she supposed it was the shock of her new environment that was making her so uncharacteristically sentimental.

Kochanski took a deep breath, and focused on what was ahead of her.

“Alright,” she said out loud to the computer. “Let’s do this.”

*******

_“First, you’ve got to learn from observation. I’m a hard act to follow, it’s true, but there’s no other way about it. See the Ace. Hear the Ace. Be the Ace.”_

__

In the ship’s massive library, the computer pulled up gigabytes of security footage and personal documentation. Its archive spanned hundreds of incarnations and thousands of individual adventures, and Kochanski spent hours watching Aces of varying agility and strength (but, as always, uniform appearance and voice) spar with villains and monsters.

The computer would replay segments over and over, coaching Kochanski to pick up on technique, intonation, and rhythm. Diagrams and graphs filled the screen, superimposed over the videos, statistics on battles and procedures and strategy; the science of bravery distilled down to dry figures and charts that Kochanski nevertheless pored through as diligently as she’d done any subject she’d ever studied, all the way back to her straight-A record on macaroni art as a six-year-old.

*******

_“Next, you’ve got to get in shape. It’s not as easy as I make it look to knock down mutant invaders with a single roundhouse kick, or put a fascist dictator into a headlock and take out his five cronies with only a rubber mallet. You’ll be facing down some of the fiercest foes this side of the multiverse, and unless you’re in peak condition, it’ll be a tricky thing indeed!”_

In the Wildfire’s spacious hologrammatic immersion decks, Kochanski fought off computer generated foes and wrangled with simulated moral dilemmas. She learned how to shoot a gun and do it in style; she became familiar with the weight of a broadsword in her hand. She proved most adept at the acrobatic exercises prescribed by the computer--spinning through hoops, cartwheeling around moving obstacles with a grace she hadn’t known she possessed.

To encourage her to power through the punishing training, the computer would spout heartening platitudes at regular intervals. “The universe needs you,” it would say, reiterating Ace’s advice from his video messages. But it was true, more true than it had ever been. There were people out there who needed Ace, who needed help and aid and assistance and, most importantly, someone to believe in. Even if it wasn’t her name, even if it wasn’t her legend, Kochanski felt that novel tug of want that spurred her on, on through those first few days on the _Wildfire_ that blurred into one solid slog up an upward slope towards a seemingly unreachable goal.

 

*******

Though dutifully following Ace’s encouraging orders since the beginning, and supplementing the computer’s training with her own trademark system of note-taking, journal-keeping, and self-evaluation throughout, Kochanski had at first questioned whether all of this was entirely necessary-- she was only going to be Ace once, after all, to pay off her debt. On the second day of training, when she queried the ship’s computer, explained to it that this was a one-time gig and that when she was done, she’d pass on the ship and the role to a real Rimmer, and restore the chain to order, the rosy corona on the screen burbled with laughter.

“You’re so silly, Ace,” the computer said. “Of course you have to do it all. You do it all every time.”

“But I’m not like the others,” Kochanski protested.

“Yes, you are,” the computer said coaxingly. “You all say that.” And then its avatar was replaced with a number, a pulsating silver 4266 that danced and sparked before her eyes.

“Is that…?” Kochanski whispered, awed.

“You are the four thousand, two hundred and sixty sixth Ace Rimmer,” said the computer. “And here is what you do.”

Then the computer was zooming in, in on the numbers until they filled the frame and then subsumed it, the pixels that made up the numerals growing into larger squares that moved and shifted with their own internal images. One of these images, a single element of the larger number, now occupied the screen. It was a scan of an illuminated manuscript, the type written by lonely monastic scribes during the Dark Ages. The words were undecipherable, blackletter Latinate in dark strokes across the page, but the illustrations were vivid and striking. Rendered in carefully crude glyphs of indigo and cochineal scarlet, Kochanski recognized Ace Rimmer fighting against a massed army of Viking soldiers, horned hats and all. Behind his head was a circular halo of gold leaf.

“Dimension 383,” the computer said. “Time track classification seventeen, incarnation 99. You saved a Cistercian monastery in Cornwall from Viking invaders.”

“I’ve been watching the videos,” Kochanski said. “I know what he’s done!”

“After you left, you were named a saint,” the computer continued, “and your story remained.”

The scan of the manuscript shifted to more pages, texts and illustrations that moved through the history of humanity of dimension 383, from the Dark Ages on through the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, on, on through the Industrial Revolution and the Space Race-- and they all told of Ace, his achievements, his lasting impact. Stories and articles and stained glass windows raced across the display, an entirely different perspective than the first-person limited view of Ace’s accomplishments that she’d been learning from thus far. He was a saint, he was a god, he was the hero with a thousand faces that formed the foundation, in this universe, of every superhero comic and action movie and ideal of masculinity. These legends, these words of praise and myth were Ace’s legacy, and as she leaned in until her breath fogged up the screen, trying to comprehend the millennia of folklore that flashed in an unending staccato, the computer zoomed out, back to the giant 4266. It gave Kochanski a second to breathe, to try and understand, before it dove back in, into another pixel of another numeral, and it all began again.

“Dimension 21,” it said, “time track classification nine, incarnation 502, and you rescued a Neolithic tribe from a wooly mammoth stampede.” Now there were cave paintings, pottery shards, prehistoric artifacts all adorned with representations, in varying artistic styles, of Ace Rimmer’s unique silhouette. Cuneiform tablets, Hebrew script, the annals of human history and belief with Ace Rimmer right in the center. As the visual timeline sped by, Kochanski watched as his form was replaced with that of the generic “hero,” fitted to each individual culture his legend passed through-- but she knew it was still him.

The computer would have gone on forever, zooming in and out of that framework, but after four or five dimensions of Ace towering over history as an all-commanding conceptualization of courage and worth, Kochanski cleared her throat and said, “Alright. You can stop.”

The number swirled and dissolved, transforming back into the computer’s silvery-pink avatar. “Do you understand, now?” it asked.

Kochanski took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. “I think I do, yeah,” she said, nodding. “I’ve got to live up to that. I can’t blow it off-- I can’t let him down-- I can’t let all the people of all the universes down, I’ve got to be what they think he-- what they think _I_ am. Even if it is only once.”

Though the computer had no face, Kochanski could swear she felt it smiling, and she began to smile too. “Thank you,” she said.

“Works every time,” the computer giggled.

*******

So she jumped back into her training with renewed vigor, and now she had not just her personal debt to Ace to motivate her, but also the weight of universes upon universes of purpose and position that the computer had shown to her. The shining 4266 appeared now on the monitors that dotted the Wildfire’s rooms and corridors, a mnemonic of her duty, and she pondered on it as she underwent the assigned agility tests and ethical examinations.

Arnold Rimmer had never been just one person, as much as anyone in the vast multiverse existed without a full complement of alternate selves. But Ace Rimmer, the Ur-concept of the Man who Saves, was unique in both his singularity and the multitude of aspects he held. The number on the displays across the ship was like a mantra, reminding Kochanski of her place in this unending cycle, her place that was simultaneously fated and flawed.

She imagined Ace, the original Ace, the alpha, growing up in a universe that knew nothing of his future exploits and yet, due to the time-track-hopping, dimension-spanning nature of his adventures, held him in its mythology as the heroic archetype he would grow up to embody. Was he told stories of who he would become, the kind of fairy tales children listened raptly to across history? Did the influence of these narratives play a part in encouraging his valiant nature, in a temporal paradox of behavioral cause and effect that defied unraveling?

It hurt her head to think about, in the same way that considering her own complex narrative sometimes felt like picking at an unhealed scab somewhere in the depths of her frontal lobe. Humans were never meant to know or personify such manifold intricacy, and Kochanski supposed it was a testament to Ace’s uniqueness that he’d managed it so well. She only could hope that everything she was doing now would prepare her to do the same.

*******

 

By the time Kochanski’s training came to a close, it felt like she’d been on the _Wildfire_ for months, years, even-- but the diary she'd been keeping assured her that it had only been two and a half weeks.

She had woken up that morning, in that spacious bunk littered with the debris of Aces past. She yawned, stretched, and asked the computer: “What have you got for me today?”

“You’re ready, Ace,” the computer said.

“W-what?” Kochanski stuttered. She knew her training couldn’t last forever, but was she really done? She didn’t feel ready-- but then again, knowing what she knew about the history of the role she’d agreed to take on, she doubted whether any amount of preparation would make her feel truly ready.

The computer did not respond, but then she heard a soft click from across the room. The door of the locked closet swung open slightly, and a golden light leaked out from within.

Kochanski slowly clambered out of bed, and walked over to the closet. Tentatively, she put her hand on the doorknob, and pulled it open.

Inside, shining as though somehow generating its own light, was Ace’s outfit, arranged neatly on a mannequin, like the kind she remembered from fancy dress shops back in Glasgow. Boots, pants, jacket, shirt, and, capping it all off, the wig. The last time she’d seen it, it had been dusty with ash and smelled of smoke from the wreck of the _Blue Midget_ \-- forever ago, in the warped timeline of her mind. But now it was pristine, its hazel fibers neatly arranged in perfect swoops.

Kochanski swallowed, and took a deep breath. This was what she’d been waiting for, what she had come here for, but the outfit, despite its objective ludicrousness, somehow managed to intimidate her.

“Go on, put it on,” the computer’s voice said kindly.

“Are you sure it’s going to fit?” Kochanski asked, aware that she was stalling for time. “I mean, Ace-- the real Ace-- he’s just a bit taller, and I’ve got, well--” She gestured ineffectually at her chest.

“You are the real Ace, silly! Of course it’ll fit,” the computer said. Kochanski wondered if it had any conception of the fact that she differed so greatly from any of this bedroom’s previous inhabitants, or if its persistent state of lovestruckness prevented that level of attention to detail.

“Okay, okay, I’m putting it on!” Kochanski said, more to convince herself than to inform the computer.

A minute later she was standing in front of the mirror, wearing everything except the wig, which she was holding in her hands. She had kept the light bee pendant on, though only the red string was visible above the fluffy collar of the jacket. The whole to-do fit like a glove, miraculously tailored to her proportions.

She turned around, inspecting her silhouette.

“I look…” she said, trying to find the words. “Incredibly stupid, really. How did he ever get anything done in this thing?”

“You look soooo good, Ace!” the computer purred. Kochanski rolled her eyes.

“Thanks,” she said. She glanced at the wig in her hands, and hesitated for just a second before putting it on.

Now she really looked the part. Staring at her reflection, she almost didn’t recognize herself-- for a second she saw only Ace Rimmer, standing tall. Then she blinked, and it was just her again, plain old Kristine Kochanski in a farcical costume.

She waggled her eyebrows, did a few practice winks, cleared her throat. “Smoke me a kipper, I’ll be back for breakfast,” she intoned, struggling to keep a straight face.

“Ooh, very good,” the computer said, and then, in a more professional tone: “When you’re ready, please proceed to the cockpit.”

So in her shiny boots, Kochanski strode down the now-familiar corridors of the _Wildfire_ towards the cockpit.

Like the closet, the cockpit had been locked up until now. There had been a moment, a few days ago, when the training had seemed especially interminable and a strange thought had come to her mind, unbidden. If the _Wildfire_ was capable of jumping to any dimension in the multiverse, then wouldn’t it be possible for her to jump back to the dimension she’d been born in? The one she’d left behind seven years ago thanks to a temporal rift and a harpoon gun; the one she’d barely given a passing thought since her time in the Brig; the one subsumed almost entirely in her mind by the dimension that she occupied now.

She’d wandered down to the cockpit, telling herself she wasn’t actually going to go anywhere, of course not, she just wanted to see if she _could_ , if she wanted to, which she totally didn’t-- and then the door was locked, and the computer had reprimanded her gently.

“You do this every time,” it had said. “You can’t make any jumps until you’ve finished your training! Get back to the library, I’ve got more videos to show you.”

And on her way back to the library, Kochanski had realized how absurd she was being. It was the Dave Lister of this dimension that she owed an apology to, after all-- she couldn’t just run back to a different version of him and forget about the whole thing. No, that would be the easy way out.

So now, as the cockpit door eased open at her touch, and she finally entered the cramped compartment and settled down into the pilot’s chair, she didn’t feel tempted to set a course for her lost life. Instead, with fluid movements she’d practiced over and over inside flight simulators for the past two and a half weeks, Kochanski powered up the ship’s navigation computers, performing routine checks on the fuel level, backup engines, and artificial gravity systems.

“And don’t forget to switch on the dimension jump drive,” the computer reminded her.

Kochanski shook her head. “Right,” she said. “Of course.” She couldn’t believe she’d forgotten. Her subconscious was still rallying against the impossibility of what she was about to do, even after all the painstaking preparation she’d undergone. She shifted uncomfortably in her seat, the shiny leather fabric of her trousers crackling as she moved.

“And you’re sure I’ll be able to get back to this dimension, no problem, yeah?” she said.

“That’s right,” the computer said. “Ever since you installed the directional compilation instrument bank you picked up on 55th century Mars in Dimension 103, dimension jumping just hasn’t been the gamble it once was.”

“Good.”

With a grumble and a roar, the _Wildfire_ lifted off. As the ship rose up, Kochanski could see the wreckage of the _Blue Midget_ down on the rocky surface of the planetoid. She gave it a little salute, as a goodbye.

The planetoid grew small below her, and within a minute Kochanski had maneuvered the craft out of atmospheric range-- far enough to engage the jump drive.

She spun the dial on the directional bank to “random.” For her first and only mission, she wanted to be surprised.

“Jump drive engaged,” she said. “Preparing to break the reality barrier in five, four, three…”

Her hand hovered above the big red button that would send the ship, with her inside of it, hurtling off across the multiverse. She thought of Lister, and the rest of the _Red Dwarf_ crew, mourning her death. She thought of Ace, his dying words, and the weight of his legacy resting on her shoulders.

“Two…”

She closed her eyes.

“One!”

*******

Roger Forrest sprinted down the halls of the Jupiter Mining Corporation-owned Enceladus Base Anansi, screaming in terror.

He was screaming because about ten feet behind him was a mining droid, a hulking, nine-foot behemoth of riveted metal and ceramic. Now, normally, on a quietly productive, mostly automated base like this, devoted to squeezing every last drop of water and mineral out of the Saturnian moon’s crust, a mining droid was no cause for alarm. In fact, the sight of one of the toiling machines usually invoked a sense of pride among the base’s inhabitants, as they had won the intense bidding war to be the first base in the solar system to get their hands on a batch of these newfangled machines.

But, in Forrest’s personal experience, all of that tended to fall by the wayside when the droid in question was wearing a necklace of severed heads and clutching a whirring chainsaw.

He rounded a corner, ducked into an open broom closet, and shut the door, hearing with relief the lumbering footsteps of the droid pass by without stopping. His two-way belt radio beeped, signaling an incoming message, and the voice of his colleague Eugenia Callahan came through.

“Forrest, are you there? Woods has just been taken down, I repeat, Commander Woods is down-- it took her head right off, oh God--”

A choked sob, a few deep breaths, and then Callahan continued, quieter: “Forrest, if you can hear me-- we’ve got to keep that thing away from the Brightstone! Our lives don’t matter, in the big scheme of things--”

Forrest scoffed. He bet she wouldn’t be going on with that selflessness smeg when the insane droid was about to decapitate her, just like it did to Woods, and Huntington, and Hoopes, and Schultz.

“--but if it breaches the Brightstone’s stasis field, the resulting shockwave could destroy every settlement from here to Titan!”

“What do we do?” Forrest spoke into the radio’s receiver.

“We’ll figure it out-- but first, where are you? We need to stick together.”

“Er, ah-- well, if you must know, I’m in a broom closet. J hall, second floor.”

“Don’t move,” said Callahan. “I’m on my way.”

“Be careful, Callahan--” Forrest began, but then the radio signal cut off, and then he was alone, in the dark, and he could feel the rumbling stomps of the insane droid through the cold concrete floor.

A minute later, the door was flung open, and Forrest emitted an ungodly screech that was cut short by a warm hand over his mouth.

“Shut up, Forrest!” Callahan hissed. “Do you _want_ it to find us?”

He shook his head, and she removed her hand, wiping his spittle off on the leg of her gray JMC-issue mining jumpsuit.

Forrest stood up, and peeked out of the closet, looking down the corridor. “No sign of the droid,” he said, and then turned back to Callahan.

“Are we… are we the only ones left, then?” he asked, without really wanting to hear the answer.

Callahan nodded solemnly. “I think so,” she said, and they stood in silence for a few precious moments, mourning their lost crewmates. Woods, the impossibly beautiful commander of the base; Huntington and Hoopes, the older married couple that were like parents to them all; and Schultz, who was a massive smeghead and would not be missed by anybody.

“Alright,” Callahan said stoically. “We’ve got to get to the control room, send a distress signal. Then we head to the Brightstone’s enclosure and protect it until help arrives-- or die trying.”

Forrest gawked. “A distress signal? To whom? It’s the off season, so there’s nobody at Base Elegba and no ships in orbit, and by the time the message reaches Mimas or Tethys our heads will have been summarily separated from our necks!”

“Stop asking such hard questions,” Callahan said. “It’s protocol, and you know it!”

“We need some kind of defense,” Forrest said. “Let’s grab a few bazookoids.”

Callahan shook her head. “They’re all locked up,” she said. “Keyed into the Captain’s iris print. We’d need to grab-- ugh, we’d need to grab her head off the droid before we could gain access to the armory.”

“Well, smeg,” said Forrest. He cast his eyes around the broom closet for something, anything, that could act as a weapon. He settled on a large, colorful mop-- if anything, it would distract the droid’s visual drive for long enough so that Forrest could utter some decent last words.

As quietly as possible, tiptoeing through the gunmetal-gray corridors of Base Anansi, Callahan and Forrest made their way down to the control room. Thankfully, they did not encounter the droid, but its footsteps were audible and regular, reminding the miners of their perilous predicament.

Callahan had settled herself in front of the communications console and was about to hit transmit when Forrest shoved her out of the way.

“Come on, I should get to do it,” he said.

“You?” Callahan said. “You’re a gibbering, sobbing mess. You’d give them a bad impression!”

"I'm a Human Resources Representative!" protested Forrest, hastily drying his eyes on his sleeve. "I took a whole class on how to efficiently and professionally communicate mortal peril back at the Academy!"

"Did _you_ see your captain get decapitated before your very eyes? I don’t think so,” argued Callahan. “I don’t think you’re sufficiently aware of the gravity of the situation to effectively convey to ‘them,’ if ‘they’ even exist, exactly what we’re going through!”

Forrest was about to provide a smacking retort, neatly illustrating why _he_ should be the one to send the distress signal, when an ominous _thump-thump_ sound, with an accompanying _whrrrrrr_ , sounded from outside the control room.

Forrest turned to Callahan, and pointed at the door they had come through. “Did you lock--”

“No, I thought you--”

They stared at each other for a moment, the magnitude of their mistake hanging in the air like an offensive joke said just a bit too loudly in a crowded pub, and then they ran to the door.

“Lock it, lock it!” yelled Forrest, throwing himself against the heavy door dramatically, clutching his rainbow mop, as Callahan fumbled with the complicated lock.

“I’m trying!” she screeched in response, and after a few tense seconds she managed to engage the double-bolt mechanism. But that flimsy lock wouldn’t hold up alone against the droid for more than a minute, Callahan was positive--

“Barricade it,” she called to Forrest, over the increasingly loud clanking that heralded the murderous droid’s approach. “And _I’ll_ go send the distress call!”

Callahan dashed back to the console, leaving the panicked Forrest throwing benches and boxes up against the door behind her.

“This is an SOS distress call from Enceladus Base Anansi, Jupiter Mining Corporation subsidiary ID 1255,” she spoke into the comms system, broadcasting the message along every known wavelength for maximum exposure. “We are under attack, I repeat, we are under attack by a rampaging mining droid. It was just a prototype, but its directive files got corrupted somehow-- it’s killed most of the crew--” Callahan struggled to maintain a calm demeanor. “The only survivors are me, Eugenia Callahan, Mining Engineer Second Class, and--”

A loud bang split the air, and Callahan whipped around to see a huge dent being pummeled into the thick metal of the door from the outside. Forrest’s barricade had grown substantially, but all the spinny chairs and filing cabinets in the world couldn’t keep back that droid for long.

Callahan quickly turned back to the console, trying to remember where she’d left off. “Er-- ah, this base’s operations are powered by the Brightstone, an artifact mined from the the core of Enceladus. It’s a chunk of rare radioactive alloy, stabilized by a special demi-stasis field in the center of the base, and if that droid reaches--”

“Cut the exposition smeg, Callahan, we don’t have the time!” Forrest shouted from behind her, waving his mop around for emphasis.

“Right, sorry-- anyway, long story short, the safety of the entire Saturn system is currently in jeopardy, and so if there’s anyone out there, please, please send help immediately, or we will die, and so will you, thank you!”

Callahan ended the transmission, and then squeezed her eyes shut tight and started whispering a practiced mantra under her breath.

Across the room, Forrest took a cue from Callahan and bowed his head as well. He wasn’t normally one for prayer-- in fact, he’d been a member of the Atheist Club in secondary school back on Earth (although that was really only because the girl he fancied had been president)-- but he was willing to make an exception during these trying times.

“Come on,” he whispered to any and all deities, spirits, gods or ghosts that might have been listening in, against the strengthening din of the droid’s inevitable entrance, “give us a miracle.”

*******

Kochanski leaned back as the video ended and the terrified young engineer’s face disappeared from her cockpit monitor.

“Alrighty, let’s head down there,” she said, attempting to drop her voice into an Ace-appropriate register. Better get warmed up now, she supposed, instead of sounding like an idiot when she arrived. Not that she was positive she wouldn’t sound like an idiot anyway, though.

According to the ship’s displays, she had jumped to Dimension 432, time track classification twenty-nine-- which would put her right around the 23rd century. Familiar territory.

With the practiced hand of a Navigation Officer, Kochanski eased the ship down into the atmosphere of Enceladus. She locked on to Base Anansi’s location, programmed the descent path and docking procedure into the autopilot module, and then got up from her seat.

In an anteroom right off of the cockpit, racks of weapons were stacked up for easy access. Kochanski perused the offerings, and eventually selected a slim laser pistol, a grappling-hook gun, and, for backup, a Venusian-ore dagger that glinted appealingly in the low light. She hoped that would suffice.

The ship docked unceremoniously in Base Anansi’s west launching bay, and Kochanski hopped out of the ship through the cockpit exit, her ears peeled for any sign of the mining droid that was currently running amok.

Hastily pulling up the schematics of the base on an infoscreen outside the bay, Kochanski noted that the control room was in the northwest corner of the first floor, and the droid’s energy signature was registering in the corridor right outside of it-- it hadn’t broken in yet. If she could just somehow get to the control room without using that corridor, she’d be able to defend it from the inside.

Paging through holographic layers of blueprints and evacuation plans, Kochanski finally came across the map of the ventilation system, and-- _yes!_ \-- there was a direct route from the second-story dormitory to the control room below, through a cooling shaft that was currently not in use.

“Just like old times,” she said, took a deep breath, then ran off towards the stairs.

*******

“Hold on in there! I’m coming!”

At the sound of the unfamiliar voice, Callahan instantly sprang apart from Forrest. They had been huddled closely together, practically unconscious with terror, but now they backed away from each other, embarrassed.

Forrest craned his neck to the ceiling, searching for the source of the voice. “Who is that?” he called. “W-who are you?”

Callahan shot a glance back at the door, which, by her estimation, was now mere seconds away from destruction. “Whoever you are, please, will you hurry up!” she shouted, desperately. “We’re about to get brutally murdered by a massive, homicidal robot!”

Without warning, a moving blur of gold and sienna flashed from the ceiling to the floor, landing gracefully and silently. It unfolded itself before Callahan and Forrest’s eyes into the striking form of what was undoubtedly the most handsome human being that either of them had ever laid eyes on.

“The name’s Rimmer. Ace Rimmer,” the hero said, in a voice like honey, somehow shimmering in the dark control room as though sunlight was shining on that single square foot of floor. “I picked up your distress call and zoomed over as fast as I could. Hope I’m not too late, Miss Callahan, and...?”

“F-Forrest, Roger Forrest, Human Resources Representative--”

“Enchanté,” Ace said.

Callahan had to prevent herself from swooning on the spot. A quick look at Forrest, wide-eyed and white-knuckled, told her that he, too, was experiencing the same difficulties. He’d even dropped his mop.

“We’d better scramble,” Ace said, taking in the state of the collapsing door. “That door’s not looking too steady.”

“But how?” Forrest said. “There’s only one door, and that thing’s behind it-- and we can’t reach that vent you dropped in from, it’s too high up!”

“We’ll see about that,” said Ace, and then: “Quick, grab hold!”

Unquestioningly, Callahan and Forrest grabbed onto Ace. There was a pop and a clank as Ace sent a grappling hook flying up into the open vent, and then they were being lifted up, up through the cooling duct as the door finally gave, and went flying across the control room below with an enormous crash.

They exited one by one onto the floor of the second-floor dormitory, through a second vent low to the ground. Once everyone was out, Forrest glanced back down through the vent, and then screamed.

“It’s right below us!” he shrieked, scrambling up and away from the opening. “It was looking up at me, with those glowing red eyes--”

“Where’s the Brightstone held?” Ace asked, interrupting Forrest. “We’ve got to get there before the droid does, you said it yourself.”

“Ah-- er,” stammered Callahan, jealous of Forrest’s ability to string a sentence together in Ace’s presence. “It’s, um.” She resorted to obtuse hand gestures, pointing out the dormitory door and miming a right turn, then a left turn, then a circle that represented the central, circular tower of the base.

“Right. Got it,” said Ace immediately. “Take a left, then a right at the first hallway, then across the gangway to the central tower. Thanks a million, Genie.”

Nobody had called her Genie since her first and only boyfriend, Mark Huntington, with whom she'd spent a shimmering six months in Year 10, and at those simple syllables a technicolor vision bloomed in her mind. Ace, sweeping her off her feet in a vast meadow with those strong arms, kissing her, a soaring orchestral version of “Happy Together” playing in the background--

Forrest’s elbow in her side interrupted this reverie, and Callahan jerked back to reality to see Ace heading out of the dormitory, off down the hall towards the Brightstone’s central enclosure. She and Forrest quickly followed.

As they rushed towards the Brightstone’s keep, with Ace in the lead, Forrest leaned over and spoke into Callahan’s ear.

“God, she’s gorgeous,” he said.

“‘ _She??_ ’ Are you mad?” hissed Callahan in response. “There’s no way Ace is a woman! I can practically see his muscles rippling underneath that jacket, it’s like X-ray vision. He’s a vision of masculinity!”

“No,” said Forrest. “Look.”

And Callahan looked, and blinked, and gave her head a shake, and looked again, and then she realized that Forrest was right.

She thought for a moment, then shrugged.

“I never, ever, thought I’d say this, but…”

“But what?”

“I’d still hit it.”

*******

Kochanski was having the time of her life.

She’d always considered herself a reasonably capable person-- she’d entered the Academy at 17, a prodigious accomplishment, and it had been uphill from there. But while her previous job of piloting a city-sized mining ship through the solar system had been enjoyably challenging, it had never, ever provided her with the pure adrenaline thrill that was currently invigorating her every nerve.

Back on the _Wildfire_ , she had worried about messing up, about all that training still not being enough. But striding down the hallway, the awed whispers of Callahan and Forrest echoing from behind her, Kochanski couldn’t believe she’d ever doubted herself. It might have just been some strange intrinsic magic of the clothes she was wearing, of the wig or of the sunglasses, but she could feel confidence and charm exuding from her like an aura, and she knew that whatever danger lurked around the corner was no match for her now.

She turned left, and came face-to-face with the locked door that led into the central tower of Base Anansi.

“I’ll get that,” said Callahan, rushing forward to punch in a keycode, but Forrest beat her to it.

“There you go, Ace,” he said, pushing the door open.

Kochanski gave him a nod. “Thanks, kiddo,” she said, and stepped through.

The central tower was a high-ceilinged, wide, silo-like cavern. Metal catwalks crisscrossed the diameter of the second level, which Kochanski, Callahan, and Forrest currently stood on: it was ringed with the blinking machine banks that made up the base’s life support systems. A ladder on the opposite side led down to the first level. Twenty feet below, surrounded by the soft white haze of a demi-stasis field, the Brightstone hovered. Around its raised dais, extending all the way to about five feet from the walls, there was a lattice of red security lasers. Kochanski recognized the type: at that strength, those lasers could burn through flesh and bone, easy-- but she wasn’t sure they were strong enough keep away the droid.

“She’s a real beauty,” murmured Kochanski, referring to the pulsating allure of the Brightstone.

“Yeah,” Callahan agreed. “To tell you the truth, I’ve never quite understood out how it works, but it is very pretty--”

Forrest suddenly clapped a hand over Callahan’s mouth. She ripped it away indignantly, but before she could verbally protest, he put a finger to his lips.

“Shhh,” he said. “Do you hear that?”

Kochanski heard it: those heavy, stomping footsteps. They were coming from down below, and then before she could react, a resounding boom shook the entire tower.

Forrest screamed. Callahan pointed and shrieked, “It’s here!”

The mining droid had smashed its way into the lower level of the tower, and Kochanski saw it fully for the first time. It was a brutish, humanoid hulk of metal, with a wide, faceless head that had two glowing red eyes set deep into it like deadly jewels. Obviously built to survive the harsh conditions of the semi-terraformed moon it was designed to mine, the disparate attributes that had made it a strong and versatile worker now came together to form one terrifying, berserk whole. Kochanski grimaced at the sight of the four severed heads (two male, two female) strung up around its neck, and shook her head in disgust. She looked forward to ensuring that this thing never took another life.

Kochanski walked forward onto the gangway, leaving Forrest and Callahan back by the door. She drew her laser pistol and fired it down towards the droid. One shot connected with the chainsaw the droid was gripping, and it clattered to the floor. But the other shots bounced harmlessly off the droid’s metal breastplate, burning scars in the walls of the tower.

The droid looked up, ponderously. Kochanski’s breath caught in her throat as its glowing eyes bored into hers.

Then, with surprising agility, the droid leapt up into the air, and ripped the metal catwalk out from underneath her feet.

Kochanski barely managed to stifle her scream (heroes didn’t scream, she knew) as she fell, down towards the searing lasers. But somehow, like the whole world had conveniently decided to slow down just for her, she was able to pull out her grappling hook gun, fire it up at the railing of one of the other intact gangways, and jerk to a halt, her boots inches above the red lines of light.

“Ace!” someone yelled, and Kochanski couldn’t tell if it came from Callahan or Forrest. But she didn’t dare look up-- her eyes, as she dangled, were focused on the droid, which was now stepping, unhurriedly, towards the shining Brightstone. The lasers, as she suspected, provided no defense.

She had to buy some time-- she had to _think_ \--

And then she remembered the dagger stowed in her inner jacket pocket. Still holding onto the grappling hook gun with one hand, she took the dagger out with the other and hurled it towards the droid’s left wrist joint, where two metal plates met.

It connected with a satisfying _thunk_ , driving through the chink in the droid’s armor and burying itself in the floor. The droid fell to the ground hand-first, its wrist pinned.

Kochanski doubted whether she had more than a minute before the droid, with all of its mechanical strength, pulled itself free.

“Callahan! Forrest!” she yelled up, aware that her grip on the grappling hook gun was slipping perilously. “I need you to disable the security system, so I can get down safely!”

Callahan leaned forward over the second-floor railing. “I can’t!” she called, and pointed. “The controls are down there!”

Kochanski looked to where Callahan was pointing, and saw the device from which the lasers were being generated. It was a shiny chrome box with a dial on the side, and, squinting, Kochanski could just make out that the dial was set at 6 out of 11.

A plan unfurled in her mind now, a nanosecond miracle. She took a deep breath, and then she let go of the grappling hook gun.

She flipped, in midair, and landed on her hands, upside down but untouched by the latticework of lasers that danced in the air around her. The muscle memory from her training all coming back to her in a rush, she executed a series of acrobatic jumps and cartwheels-- over and under the shining red lines, moving in an agile blur. She cleared the Brightstone, her face passing dangerously within an inch of the boundary of its stasis field, and then landed safely on the other side, next to the projection unit.

A horrendous scraping noise sounded from a few feet away. The droid ripped its wrist free of the floor and rose to its feet, the dagger still embedded between its armor plates. Kochanski fumbled around the side of the laser box, and brought the dial on its side down to zero. The lasers flickered and went out, and the droid advanced towards the Brightstone.

“What are you _doing?_ ” yelled Forrest, from above. “It’s gonna break the stasis field!”

“You have to trust me!” Kochanski replied, and it was directed to herself as much as it was to Forrest and Callahan.

She took the unit in her hands-- it was surprisingly light-- and spun around. The droid was feet away from the Brightstone now, its arm outstretched, and its back turned to Kochanski.

“Hey!” she shouted. “You big lug!”

The droid’s squat head, moving independently of its torso, spun slowly around.

Kochanski waved the projection unit, holding it up above her head with both hands, one finger on the dial. “Say hello to my little friend.”

And then, with a flick of her wrist, she turned the dial on the side up to eleven, and as the lasers shot out, she brought the whole contraption down.

With a sound like meat sizzling on a grill, the droid erupted into dozens of chunks of metal and wire that thumped, inert, to the ground.

There was silence, for a moment, and a ringing in Kochanski’s ears. And then she could hear again, and she heard applause, from above, cheering and clapping, and the hum of the Brightstone’s unharmed stasis field and the buzz of the lasers still coursing from the device she held in her hands.

Coming to her senses, she quickly switched off the projection unit and set it carefully on the floor. She walked over to the remains of the droid and recovered her knife, and then ascended the ladder on the side of the tower back up to the second floor.

“Ace, you did it! You saved us!” squealed Forrest as Kochanski came towards them, brushing bits of robot off of her jacket. “And you saved the whole Saturn system,” added Callahan, her voice oozing with thankfulness.

“All in a day’s work,” said Kochanski nonchalantly. She was tempted to pull off her wig, let her hair tumble out, and speak in her real voice, as the real her, tell the two of them everything that this day was to her-- but she had to maintain the illusion. So instead, she simply nodded, saluted, and then walked out the door.

*******

 

Callahan and Forrest followed Ace down the stairs and all the way to the launching bay.

“Wow, your ship is beautiful,” gushed Callahan. She didn’t want Ace to leave.

“Thank you,” said Ace, proudly. “You’re not so bad yourself.”

Callahan blushed, and Ace winked at her.

“Where are you going to go? What are we supposed to do?” Forrest asked. He didn’t want Ace to leave, either.

“Your SOS call should reach Tethys City within twenty-four hours, and then a rescue mission will be sent out,” Ace said. “I’m sure a competent team like you can manage to hold on until then, hey?”

“Of course,” Forrest said. “But-- do you have to leave?”

“After everything you’ve done for us, you could at least stay for, er, lunch?” Callahan suggested, struggling to recall what time of the day it was.

“Sorry, chums,” Ace said, shaking her head. “I’ve got to dash.”

Callahan hesitated for barely a second before stepping forward and planting a wet, sloppy kiss on Ace’s mouth.

Ace’s eyebrows rose behind her sunglasses. “Well, I--” she began, but then Forrest pushed Callahan out of the way and wrapped Ace in a tight embrace. Then he stepped back, and gave her a look, a look that combined with his body language formed the universal indicator of sexual desire.

“Ah,” Ace said. She looked at Forrest and Callahan, both aching with the cocktail of gratitude, awe, and lust that accompanied near-death experiences, and then she shook her head apologetically.

“You are both wonderful,” she said, “but, ah. My, er, heart is promised to another.”

Callahan and Forrest nodded sagely. Of course.

“It was worth a shot,” Callahan said, under her breath, and they both watched, with a vague sense of missed opportunity, as Ace climbed into the cockpit of her scarlet ship.

She saluted to them both. “Smoke me a kipper, I’ll be back for breakfast,” she said, and lifted off, the cold Enceladus wind whooshing around the launching bay.

Forrest waved, and Callahan clutched her hand to her heart. When Ace’s ship was just a dot on the dim, blue horizon, they turned to each other, and said:

“What a guy…”

*******

In the cockpit of the _Wildfire_ , Kochanski couldn’t stop smiling.

She’d done it. She’d defeated the monster; she’d saved the people in peril; she’d prevented harm from coming to untold thousands. And it had been so _easy_. Slipping into the persona of Ace Rimmer, after those weeks of practice and rehearsal, had been comfortable and secure. It was as though being him, emulating the voice and the movement and the over-the-top affect, had been something she’d learned a long, long time ago, that now came back to her as simply as riding a bicycle.

She had come close to death, jumping through those lethal lasers and getting up close and personal with that murderous droid. But not for one second had she ever actually believed she’d fail; how could she, when she was having so much _fun_?

The looks on the faces of Forrest and Callahan as she departed had told her everything she needed to know about what being Ace was like. The glow of their admiration and desire had practically been visible with the naked eye, and although she’d turned down their implicit offer, thinking guiltily of Lister, the fact that there had been an offer at all made her slightly giddy. From the videos and stories she knew that Ace always got the girl, but the boy too? She supposed Ace’s, well _Ace_ -ness was like a solvent, dissolving the rigid boundaries of sexuality.

As the _Wildfire_ soared above Saturn’s rings, she gazed out at the impossibly beautiful vista, and pondered.

Kochanski had fulfilled her promise to Ace. It was over, it was done, and now her conscience was clear. She could go out, find the Arnold Rimmer of this dimension, get him to deliver her back to _Red Dwarf_ and to the welcoming arms of Lister, and return the role of Ace to its rightful owner.

But there was one small problem.

She didn’t want to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who left comments and kudos on the first chapter! I'm so happy people are enjoying this crazy story :)
> 
> [Here](https://24.media.tumblr.com/187aaafcd5ec40414c2d6342ea210f23/tumblr_n3h601696e1qafmk8o1_1280.jpg) is what Callahan and Forrest look like, in case you were wondering. 
> 
> Also, the theme song for this chapter is [Coattails by Broods!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rNsodyWqPY)


End file.
